5 Easy Ways To Turn Reviewers into Top Brand Advocates

In the influencer marketing sphere, intelligent shortcuts taken towards acquiring influencers really helps towards brand building and ultimately, sales. Taking reviewers and turning them into brand advocates is one such shortcut you should not be missing out on right now.

There’s an opportunity staring right at you, and you are not taking advantage of it (unless you’re Amazon, in which case - way to go, Spark!)! The ‘review’ feature is commonly found on online marketplaces and service platforms Uber, Zomato, Amazon, Flipkart, App stores and more. If you are a brand who is directly or indirectly using these platforms to acquire reviews, and if you are counting on these reviews to build a community, an audience base or both - read on.

Identify potential influencers amongst reviewers

Watch over your reviewers like a hawk guarding her flock and identify the list of repeaters. By this we mean the people who simply cannot resist their fingers from tapping reviews for almost every product or service that they use on your platform. Once you have identified your list of potential influencers, you will need a tool to pick from the lot.

This is where helpful tools like Profiler by Qoruz comes in. This Chrome extension instantly scans through people’s social media profiles to give you a clear measure of their social footprint and their presence on various social media channels. It also gives you numbers on their their engagement and following, helping you decide whether or not to onboard a reviewer as an influencer.

2. Hook potential influencers on to your platform…

A kind response to a review goes a long way.

And have them returning. Unless very strong feelings have been developed towards a product, item or service, people need incentives to review. This can come in the form of rewards to the reviewers, or making the platform engrossing and interesting for reviewers, or both. Zomato did this by turning the site into a mini social network of sorts, where people could have and follow friends as well as see reviews for each restaurant.

3. Give reviews their importance

Reviews can be instrumental in guiding a user’s decision. According to a survey by BrightLocal, 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation—which is astounding, considering most online reviews are posted by total strangers. The same survey found that only 12 percent of the population did not regularly read reviews for consumer products. With this being the case, it helps to have the site designed in such a way that the reviews section is easily accessible and visually pleasing.

4. Aim to make reviews truly social

Unless special measures are taken, reviews can live and die on your website without ever seeing the light of day and generating leads. What would incentivise a user to make the reviews truly social and take them to a platform that will give them more eyeballs?

a) Gamify the act of reviewing

Amazon gives importance to the top reviews; this works in the brand's favour as well as in the reviewer's!

Make it rewarding for users to review on your platform. In other words, the platform must natively encourage the very act of reviewing. One way of doing this could be showcasing most viewed reviews on top. Another could be giving levels to various kinds of reviewers, based on the frequency and popularity of their reviews. Observing reviewer’s behaviors to such cues also helps determine who amongst the reviewers can be converted into a brand advocate eventually.

b) Rewarding reviewers with goodies

Reviewers have it in them to automatically review the things that come their way. When the festive season is on its way or the opportunity for a sale presents itself, reward your consistent reviewers. Thank them for their support by sending in a bunch of goodies. You can send a bag with items or services that you have seen these individuals order or use most frequently. This way you can start dividing your reviewers into brand advocates of a certain type and start building your database, too!

5. Stay in touch

Carefully bring top and consistent reviewers into the funnel to turn them into brand advocates for your brand. Respond to their reviews and encourage them to be regular with their feedback. Give them privileges like discount vouchers and gift cards - little gestures to say thank you. And stay in touch through emailers or maybe even notifications on your website, to give your brand advocates something to look forward to.

Reviews, by adding content about your product or services, actually contributes to searchability of your site and boosts your ranking. You can turn this into your advantage by following these steps and using your platform itself, along with a consistent reward system, to easily transform reviewers into brand advocates.